8.25.2010

Theme: Down in the valley — Theme answers begin with synonyms of "valley."

Theme answers:

20A: Apple hater's purchase? (DELL COMPUTER).

37A: 2004 Daytona 500 winner (DALE EARNHARDT, JR.).

56A: "Wichita Lineman" singer (GLEN CAMPBELL).

49D: Geological depression, and what the first word of 20-, 37- and 56-Across is (VALLEY).

Although I do like the way DALE EARNHARDT, JR. looks in the grid, I have to say this theme left me a little chilly. Not totally cold, but definitely on the chilly side. Two of the theme answers sound alike but the third one … doesn't. Two are names of people and the other … isn't. It's this kind of inconsistency that nags at me. And then there was the crosswordese. Yikes! that's a lot of crosswordese.

There were a couple of entries that made me smile. HAYMAKER is awesome (6D: Powerful punch) and I'm always happy to see TOQUE (9A: Chef's topper). Unfortunately, for me, both those entries put together just don't make up for UDINE (36A: City of NE Italy). Come on! That doesn't even look Italian. And please don't get me started on MANURE (8D: Farm fertilizer). Hello! Breakfast test!

Crosswordese 101: EEROSaarinen (34D: Dulles Airport terminal designer Saarinen) was a Finnish American architect and designer. He is sometimes clued in relation to his father, Eliel Saarinen, also an architect. He is often clued as "First name in design" or "First name in architecture," and if one of his works appears in the clue, it's almost always the Gateway Arch.

I hate to pile on, but here's my gripe. I think DALE, DELL, and GLEN, are more commonly thought of as physical geography (if not poetic) terms, and aren't really thought of as "GEOLOGICAL DEPRESSIONs" - For me, such areas would include terminology that is clearly linked with an area's underlying geology - caldera, impact crater, or even glacial kettle, to name a few.

Not to say the terms aren't ever used when describing physical features of a landscape (VALLEY certainly is), but DALE, DELL, and GLEN just remind me of storybooks and 19th century novels, not particularly descriptive scientific terms.

This was easier than Mon or Tues...except I got HAYMAKER wrong, because the only one I know is on the farm (roto-baler). I guess they're antiques, now.So, I did figure it was sports, but it must be a pAYMAKER (SpAM) or cAYMAKER (ScAM); after all, if you told me that any of these _AYMAKERs meant something in sports, I'd have to believe you.

Haven't seen an actual soap-on-a-ROPE for ages.

Have a KID is obnoxious; but, so is have a cow.

Under the sod and the dew,Waiing the judgement day,Under the one - the Blue,Under the other - the GRAY.

Francis Miles Finch - 56 line poem I once had to learn. YouTube has a video of the guy himself reading his poem! A real tear-jerker.

Had AVoid before AVERT.

MANURE did not pass the b'fast test. But it did bring back memories of little kids saying pANURE and pagina.

For a while, I didn't know what Mr. Doran was getting at with CONJunction, and if didn't help that the crosses were Fr (ECU), Sp. (ESTADOS), and a miniature Italian city.

The theme was a cinch. GLEN is a Celtic word, and the others, DELL, DALE are Germanic from Thal, (source of our word for dollar, also). In these parts, the Hudson Valley, once very Dutch, also has Kill (Catskill, Fishkill, Peekskill, Wynantskill), which would have made it a real Wed. puzzle, but a NE thing.

The theme's tighter than you think—DELL COMPUTER is named after Michael Dell. You do get the one last name/two first names inconsistency, but they're all proper names that are synonyms of VALLEY! That's pretty tight. It's not two names and a word like CANYON, it's three names. I give the theme a thumbs-up.

Tinbeni, "decimated" used to mean "kill one-tenth of." (Oxford American labels that meaning "historical.") The word's meaning has evolved over the centuries to mean "destroy a large part of."

I knew @Hazel, our resident geologist, would chime in about DELL, DALE, & GLEN being geological terms because, and I agree with her, they are geographic terms. Geology uses much more specific, (and arcane), terminology.

My only writeover was misspelling EARNHearT. Dumb. Had to think a while about ONEBIT="at all", but accepted it in the end.

@Tinbeni and all the little mice - In my humble opinion, decimate has the word 10 in it. This doesn't change. Deci doesn't become some other number from use or disuse. So, a dozen is 12, a baker's dozen is 13 and a crackhead's dozen is about 8. A who-me-guy's decimation is not quite 10 or its opposite,or maybe even meaningless. Yeesh. Why can't we all get along? Or step out of the mouse-hole shadows.

@Anon1258 - how far you can see.

Before I take my nap, Udine is actually 100,000 souls, very Slavic, but most famous for its beautiful Tiepolo ceiling fresco.Jacob's Dream

Did this while waiting for the doctor this morning which caused me to CHIME IN late. As far as the theme goes, I was thinking at first that the theme answers were relevant to LA. There's the Hollywood DELL which is a hillside neighborhood near the Hollywood Bowl. There's Beverly GLEN which is near Bel Air, also in the hills. And then there's the San Fernando VALLEY. Only thing is, I don't know where DALE fits in. Oh well, so much for that theory.

I liked all the French stuff, RIEN, ST. LÔ, FRÈRE, ECU, LYON and ÈTUI. My downfall was the UDINE, CONJ cross. Yucky!

@SfingiYup, deci = 10.Maybe the word in the clue should have been 'devastated' ... since, like Warsaw, Poland, St. Lo was reduced to ruble.

Having been to both places. Talked with "my elder's" who survived the the ruin during WWII and subsequent re-building, had I made the statement:"Boy, you guys were decimated." they would have laughed in my face, and corrected me."Kid, the destruction was almost complete."

In St. LO, on the Church of Our Lady there are still scars on the wall of the bombing and bloodshed that took place.(If you have seen the movie "The Longest Day" it is where the Red Buttons character hung when his parachute snagged on the building).

In Warsaw, they found numerous blueprints and rebuild whole sections of the City back to what it looked like before the war.

Pick up a dictionary. "Reduce to the point of almost complete extermination" — that's in there. That meaning is in the language. That's what people normally mean when they use "decimate" these days. There is literally no question about the validity of the clue. None. As Amy, rightly, and apparently necessarily, said, the etymological origins of a word don't tell us anything about what that word comes to mean over time.

Feisty day today, glad I did the puzzle late today and got to read the threads that have occurred.

I saw a mini soccer theme, UDINE is home to Udinese as @Tuttle has already pointed out and MANURE is how you pronounce ManU or Manchester United from where I am from. I jest, I jest, I fully expect to be octomated for this post, a bit more than decimated but much less than trimated ;^)

Have fun everyone.

Oh yeah, puzzle was all right, I like Mon/Tue puzzles better this week. Not the theme that has got my all right grade, rather, the large amount of crossword-ese reduces the amount of thinking, becomes just a memory exercise.

@ZekeI whole heartily apoligize.In fact, I will make a toast to you at sunset.

@RexI realize how "Decimated" has evolve in our language.But I stand by my 1:59 comment.Had I used the word, in Europe, to the locals there, in describing how St.Lo had been destroyed, I would have been severely rebuked.

New rule for me. If you're not "Blue" ... I'll no longer make any comment 'yeah or nay' ...

@Anon 22:48: No. I can't vouch for the Latin, but the original meaning is quite precise. Decimation was a punishment used by the Roman army for mutinous or cowardly units: one in ten men was chosen by lot, and executed.

The Wikipedia article describes the procedure:A unit selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots (Sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing. The remaining soldiers were given rations of barley instead of wheat and forced to sleep outside of the Roman encampment.

Because the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in the group were eligible for execution, regardless of the individual degree of fault, or rank and distinction.

The leadership was usually executed independent of the 1 in 10 deaths of the rank and file.